tracey doxey

When I used to live in Shetand.

I thought I’d share with you my first ever jumper pattern that I designed. In August 2020, I bought a Croft house in Levenwick that faced the sea.
This was the beginning of my real knitting journey and of designing Shetland motif knitting patterns.

I started with beanie patterns but in 2021 I designed these two jumpers using the same Shetland yoke motif. The first jumper is in Shetland 2ply and I named it, dear Susan after the woman that lived in the house that I bought from 1876 to 1960.. she was a very impressive inspiring beautiful woman. You can read all about this on my blog if you dig way back.

here is a blog post, if you want to dig back

After I knitted the Dear Susan, I developed the pattern into a very easy quick knit Aran jumper and named it, Easy Aran pullover

Both of these jumpers are very easy to knit and the patterns include photograph tutorials, written instructions, and colour charts
I’ve come a long way since designing these patterns almost 6 years ago, but they are still two of my life changing decisions. I’m grateful for the time that I lived in Shetland.

Both patterns also include a 12 page story about my life in Shetland – my house named Smola, Susan – who had lived in it, an me – with each of these patterns

Here is the beginning of that story in the patterns

Dear Susan

and

A house of two women

Tracey Doxey

Preface

Shetland, May 2021

One day, towards the end of May, it rained so heavily that when the winds took up the weight of sky and sea water, dropping it upon the house roof, I could hear nothing else but the sound of pelting rain. Dampness penetrated the house, not as seeping or leaking but as a shroud that rested upon my body. I lit the fire in an attempt to fight back. After one hour, the weight lifted and I began to knit, waiting for the promised summer. By early evening, the sun came out as if there had never been rain at all so I walked to pay the wood man for the fire wood and on the way home, I took a detour to the beach. I wandered the edge of the surging waves, churned up by the afternoon’s winds. The sea, still being in a fury, was not able to slow down its waves to meet the sudden calmness of the early evening. The ebbing sea left a wake of tidal crustations as if lace edges on the beach. I looked for Buckies but all in an instant, I saw a tiny green sea urchin the size of a small flat pea. I bent to pick it up just as the tide surged over my shoes but I caught it before it was lost back in to the sea.

I wondered if you ever walked to the beach to collect sea treasures or if you never bothered.

Shetland, Arrival August 2020

Dear Susan,

I begin with the outside, with what I have to hand; my reason, my eyes, my spatial understanding, and an openness tinged with the unknown.

On arriving, I need my first investigations of your croft house interior to be made alone. I want to inhale the house, listen to my internal feelings at first sight then recognise how my body responds to the old stones – I need to let body and stones talk to me. Thoughts and feelings need space. I need space. I haven’t yet found you. I do not know that you were born in this house 145 years ago.

It is a pale grey day, mist rolling over the hill behind the house as if a blind has been half pulled down a window. The sky is bleached out, the day is calm and windless, not particularly notable.

I open the front porch door, then, I try the house door with its mismatched glass panels. It opens. To the right in the tiny vestibule area, there is a third old, board-door, painted white with a hand-hewn square wooden knob which I turn to the right. The simple mechanism lifts a wooden latch inside. That sharp click sound of the latch lifting and hitting its wooden casing is the sound that I will forever remember of this place. It is my first sound here and it will probably be my last when I leave. It is a click of old wood against old wood, heard by every man, woman and child that has ever entered this house before me, for the last 180 years. Human touch leaves tangible traces of every hand that has opened it before me. The patina of years lies dirty on the paint’s surface.

Simultaneously, within the sound, my heart is given over to the first sight of the flag floor and fire place in the sitting room. In an instant, I am sold on sound and sight. I know I will not pull out of this crazy unseen deal to buy a house and change my life entirely.

Heart over head, I move in three weeks later, with two cats and a bag, the furniture and belongings on a lorry, to arrive a week later.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

Anais Nin

Dear Susan,

I have been sent an image of your Brother – John Halcrow, in his Naval Uniform. I begin to look at censuses and the local history ancestry website then I ask around to find out about the previous inhabitants of this house. I called in at John’s to ask about you because I know nothing of the woman I had heard lived in the house for many years. He said to speak to Jim, so I went over the road to Jim’s and Martin was there too. They were off to Anne Mouat’s funeral but Jim was gracious with his time with me. He told me of you – Susanna (Susan, Cissie) who lived in the house that I now live in and that he was sent as a child, nearly 80 years ago, to collect the milk from you at your house. He told me that you had one cow on the croft, you sold milk, and you rowed the little hand-written paper milk bills up on a shelf in the porch – the same porch that I have. He was a young boy then but he clearly remembers you.

At the funeral, Martin spoke with Raymond whose Aunt lived in the house after you. You knew her, her name was Alice. Raymond came to see me the next day with a mesmerising handful of photographs of you. He introduced me to Susanna Halcrow (Susan, Cissie, or even Zizzie) The photographs, he told me, had been left in the house after his Aunt Alice had died some 30 years after you.

For the first time I could put a face to the name of a woman who lived in my old house for 83 years. Your face, your name. I sank to sit on the floor to look at your serene face in the images dating back to early 1900. Your candid expression caught by the lens of a camera, looking openly right back at me opened something inside me to find you more deeply.

You were born in this house on the 6^th February 1876 and Died on 4^th January 1960.

In the archives at the museum, I found that your Halcrow family had lived here through the 1800’s – 1960. They were listed in the 1888 valuation roll of the Symbister Estate, Whalsay, partly owned by the Laird, William Arthur Bruce (In 1888, John Halcrow, your Father) tenant, paid a yearly rent of £4, 10 Shillings for croft number 7. You would have been twelve years old (registered as knitter). The whole family are on the census of 1881 and ‘Susanna’ is listed as being five years old – there were seven people living in this small house at that time – Thomas Halcrow aged 86, Barbara Halcrow aged 83 (your grandparents), John Halcrow aged 40 and Ann Halcrow aged 41 (your parents) John aged nine, you aged five and a boy named John Brown aged 13, but you will already know this. Seven people living in this small two bedroomed house. Afterwards, I looked at records from 1838 and found your family, here, in Upperton.

In the grave yard at Levenwick cemetery, you lie on your own next to your parents and brothers. Your head is against the sea and in May, you rest above a bank carpeted in pale lemon primroses. I wonder if you are lonely, or if you are free.

Over the months after arriving, I became obsessed with you and wrote thoughts that occurred to me about you, on scraps of paper. These papers began to litter the house. I connected with you through a field of built environment in the house, photographs, your old pottery, the view from the sitting room window and eight sessions in the Shetland Museum archive which revealed the legal documents relating to some of the most notable social changes in Shetland between the 1880’s and mid 1950’s. The *Register of the Sasines, recorded the sale of the house from Laird to local in 1923, valuation rolls of rent paid for three generations of the Halcrow family for over 100 years are traceable, the Napier Commission registered the croft and detailed their calculated rental value and reduction of rents for Shetland crofters and the legal rights for tenants, the Small Holding Act, and I found the registered wills of your brother and finally your own, which gave me an insight into over one hundred years of three generations of Halcrow life within this old house. To the very end, with your serene looking gaze of steady calm and with a glint in your eyes, you put everything in order to the very last moment – crossing every t and dotting ever i. All of your wishes are written clearly in the directions of your will.

But, how am I to find out about you – what you thought and felt and how you lived? The neighbours reveal little.

So, I turn to the physical things to look at our lives carried out in the same place – the same stone walls of a house built so long ago – with no record of its beginning, how the breeze moves through the house through its open doors, the sound of the wooden doors and their opening and closing then there is the view – a view that has changed every single day of every single year but it is the same frame from which you looked and I now look out of at the changing world.

Your artifacts have been returned to the house – some pitchers, jugs, vases, plates, bowls. Before mixing them on the shelves with my own plates and jugs, I turn them around and around to connect with a life before and then there is the biggest connection of all – that you were and I am single women, living a life and paying the bills on our own in an old stone house facing the sea. Did you talk to Ralph, the dog, as I talk with Tiggy and Alfie?

I wonder about the touch upon things, the patina laid down by years of paint, of opening and closing the door, of turning door knobs, of opening and closing windows.

Finding you is like the moment I removed a damp layer of wallpaper in one gentle pull upwards, in an old abandoned derelict Shetland croft house, to reveal a perfect hand printed layer of pre 1950’s paper with wildflowers printed up it. Then, in one more pull that strip of hand printed wallpaper also came off the wall completely intact. I folded the paper and placed it under my jumper, its dampness pressed against the skin of my belly. I thought that if I were to paste the top layer of wall paper back over the void, then no one would know what had been before. No one would know what had been removed from underneath the top layer. It was as if it had never existed.

Finding you IS like finding old beautiful handprinted wallpaper lying beneath layers of less attractive paper. Then peeling it off in sections and placing it under my jumper for safety. Susan, you are under my jumper, next to my skin.

I lift the pewter lid of your old Victorian salt ware jug to look inside. Revealing, peeling, pasting, painting, lifting, closing, opening things in the house, as generations have done so before me. I paint over what has been on the walls and doors. I sit quietly to look at the layers of layers, like the quiet man who mediates first thing in the morning, stripping away layers of noise to his core, before all else happens in the day.

I spoke to Marylyn, who, as a 10-year-old child, moved in to this house with her family. It was the year you died. She told me of a wash stand in each bedroom and jugs and bowls, a sink at the bottom of the stairs and a radio on a dresser in the front room. These were your things left behind. I can picture them now. She told me that her and her brother slid down the green linoleum on the stairs and they telephoned their cousins in the house behind by joining two cans with a long piece of string and shouting out the back window in the north bedroom. I can hear their laughter now. Children in the house for the first time in over 60 years.

I have had moments where I wonder if I am prying. I wonder if you would like me. I hope that you would like me.

Maybe there is not much difference between us. Did you look in the mirror to comb your hair or did you, as I do, stand outside in front of the house to comb your hair into the wind whereupon stray grey hairs blow upon the breeze and hang upon the roses?

Susan, I am now the carer of your house for however long I can endure the winters.

House / Home – Situatedness

Outside, I Inhale the heady scent of peat smoke, as a hundred women must have done so before me.

Standing on to the hand-hewn flag stone veranda that skirts the front of the house, I take in the heady scent of the previous night’s peat fire smoke lingering in the air. The grey sky is touching the grey sea beholding all that is in front of me, under my feet and behind me within the stones of this old house.

The rough stone structure of the house has been touched by many hands over nearly two centuries and is built upon rock. This house is my place of thinking and feeling. It holds me within its walls endowed with previous lives, to live freely, without compromise of any other thing except the elements and darkness of night and the lengthy lightness of summer – yet these are still penetrable. Isolation can penetrate.

The house gives to me the opportunity of freedom and I give it the love and tenderness to continue standing strong. But the Winter took its toll on me and then Easter was beyond harsh where the floors shook and the chimneys roared with swirling storm winds. I have lost energy.

How many women have stood at this door way, eyes drawn East to the sea, mind drawn inward to the shores, children playing, wars questioned, lost ones at sea, the animals and subsistence or maybe even love? You lost your brother in the Battle of Jutland. He left this house and never returned. The interconnectivity of all of us lies in the details of life – past and present. A life before that built the foundations of this house is linked to this life now as my life now is linked to the lives gone before and to those that will live here after me. Who turned the first key? Who left the key under a stone in the garden so that when I found it, the rust was as thick as a pie crust?

Sea air permeates my skin, seeping into my bones and softening the edges of my soul. It takes time. I accept this time as a gift. I have come home. Maybe, all my life has been pointing to this one moment. A moving fluid moment of now. Time is temporary but for now, it is the right place.

I heard Marianne Faithful say, ‘ Eventually, I always end up where I’m meant to be.’

I know that here is where I am meant to be, for now.

The past is always carried into the present by the small unmovable things, the click of a latch, the stone floors, the view of the sea, the old byre, a curling photograph of a group of women, long dead, a sheet of paper left in the window sill, faded by the sun.

In the city, I had begun to lose my idea of direction. My direction was determined by worn out decisions made on previous decisions. This is a house of new decisions.

I am here, this is me, windblown, sieved soil, a beating heart, I am becoming sea, wind, beach, yarn.

The breath of my cats reminds me that in fact, I am not alone.

in October 2021 I moved back to England for many reasons

Here you can find the Dear Susan jumper pattern (in 10 sizes) or the Easy Aran Pullover in one relaxed size.

Celebrating 6 years

I’d like to celebrate something that seemed small when it happened but has been the absolute foundation of my creative practice today.

On Jan 21^st 2020 – 6 years ago, I published my first pattern on Ravelry. It was my Sea Urchin Shetland hat pattern. When I look back, I see that I have never really just produced patterns but knitting stories – like recipes – like myths – like stories that I uncovered.

The Sea Urchin Hat pattern text starts with the below (it was written in January 2020) :-

Dear lover of yarn and of the tactile act of knitting,

This hat design has been long in the making. I’m producing it as a design sheet because the pattern can be followed to the stitch and colour, or you can use it as a springboard to develop your own ideas by choosing your colours and even a different tree and star motif to the one I have chosen to incorporate into your hat pattern – you can make it your design too.

Over the years, I’ve made this hat using varying yarns and colours. I’ve blocked it in to a shape that resembled a slouching hat or a kind of beret. I still have two of these hats from 2015, and I’ve worn them in all weathers and in many countries. I’ve left one and lost it in places but I have always retraced my steps and gratefully been reunited with the hat that now is part of me every winter. Seeing the early photos of this hat, I see a different shape entirely to the one that has morphed and shaped to my head through being soaked in gale force rains, being stuffed in pockets and in bags and left for months in a drawer. In November 2019, I was living in Brindister, West Burrafirth, Shetland and wore this hat every day whilst walking around the voe. By now, its shape had morphed into a basin shape and I felt lost without it if I ever forgot it any winter day – especially in the piercing winds.

In November 2019, when, every day, I walked around the Voe at Brindister, I began to find discarded Sea Urchin shells left by seagulls. They were abandoned where the gull had left it after breaking it open to eat the urchin. I found them on banks and on flat, wet, mossy plateaus used as seagull breakfast tables. All had been smashed to get to breakfast but I was on the lookout for a complete one. The first found sea urchin shell was an exciting surprise, like finding a four-leafed clover when I was a kid. I turned it around and around looking at its pattern and the smashed opening. Then, I started looking out for these sea treasure on the land. I collected any shell that was whole, even if it was broken into until I couldn’t carry them in my hands – so I used my hat to carry the porcelain like sea urchin shells back to the croft house. When I looked, I saw that both my hat and urchin shell had a similar shape – the hat with a 5-pointed section crown and an urchin-like roundness and in return, the sea urchin shell looked hat-like

I would love for you, the knitter, designer, maker, lover of yarn and the tactile act of knitting, to make this hat in whichever colours and with whatever tree and star motif you would like. Any motif will make the same shape as the decrease around the tree creates the crown. Have fun, send photos of your finished hats to https://www.facebook.com/DoxeyKnits/ and I will post them on the FB and Instagram pages https://www.instagram.com/traceydoxey/

I would like to ask – How many knitting patterns do you know that start with a letter to the knitter ?

The pattern ends with the following words :-

I hope that you have enjoyed knitting this hat. If you want to experiment with larger needles and different yarns, as I have over the years, you’ll have a lot of fun with the results. I look forward to seeing your hats.

Big knitting love, Tracey.

How many knitting patterns do you know that end like a letter.

I want to thank this little design that I made whilst staying in Fair Isle then in Brindister, Shetland, running up to the end of 2019. The design challenged me at the end of my MA in Knitting from NTU during which time, I went back and forth to Shetland until I finally bought a croft house there in 2020 and I am ok that I made the decision to return to England in 2021– I wrote a book about my life in Shetland but it never was published.

I want to acknowledge and thank my creative spirit for developing this simple Shetland Yoke motif and simple hat into workshops, colour blending, and finally – a new jumper pattern. I have learned so much along the way, in 6 years.

What a journey.

Thank you to every one of you who has supported me by buying a knitting pattern or attended a workshop. I do not know what is to come 😊

much love. Tracey 🙂

Ravelry patterns are here – you will see the visual journey

Sea Urchin hat and mitts pattern 2020

Sea Urchin Shetland hat pattern is here

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How I choose my colours for my knitting patterns

I use two types of motifs when I design my knitting patterns – Fair Isle patterns which are traditionally OXO patterns – if anyone tells you any different or says that they are knitting Fair Isle, mostly they are knitting stranded colour work, which is also wonderful but not culturally Fair Isle.

And my other knitting designs which mostly have Shetland motifs – which I colour blend.

My Fair Isle designs have been particularly colourful. I designed the pattern as I knitted it and whilst I ran with the colours that I most love. Fair Isle motifs do not need lots of colour and always only 2 colours in each row. But, there is a particular way that I combine my colours. For example, for the Vest that I made for my sister, which is less colourful than I would normally choose because I asked her what colours she liked and she said, black, grey, navy and maybe dark red and mustard as well. I started knitting the vest with the colours she liked best, black, dark grey and light greys for the bigger OXO motifs then used the navy or red or mustard for the smaller bands of motifs in between. But, then, I got bored so stared to add the reds and navy and mustard into the larger OXO bands – kinda forgetting any sort of order. My favourite section of the vest is the part from the dividing vest at the armpits for front and back. I used her colour choices but where I wanted, and if you look carefully, you can see that I contrasted the colours in each OXO band between motif and background.

we live in time exhibition piece — sisters

Here are some examples of my Fair Isle charts/ patterns – The Long Fair Isle Hat/Scarf and the Fair Isle chart. If you would like to learn how to build your own Fair Isle vest or jumper from my Fair Isle chart, then I am running a workshop on how to do this on 15^th March.

Here are the links to the Fair Isle long/hat scarf pattern which gives you a full list of all the colours that I used as well as lots of clear easy to follow Fair Isle charts.

Here is the link to the Fair Isle Chart which gives you all of the colours for the jumper in the bottom image and also gives you full charts so that you can make your own jumper or vest. It is not a pattern.

The patterns that I make using Shetland motifs, for example the Kaleidoscope jumper, I blend the colours for the back ground and the motif, I love colour blending. I use between 3-5 colours in the background and 3 or 4 colours in the motif, which gives the knitted article more of a rich colourful knit. I go for a glow.

here is a link to my latest design – but actually, the Dear Susan, Easy Aran jumper pattern which is a very quick and easy knit, also has colour blending on the yoke, cuffs and above the rib.

All of my patterns give clear instructions which row to change your colours but if you would like to do a Colour Blending Class, I have one running on 14^th March.

new online classes are here

My favourite way to use colours in my patterns is to blend them. 🙂 let me know in a comment how you like to use your colours. and if you would like to subscribe to my posts – just fill in the subscribe box below and you’ll receive any new posts.

Fair Isle Vest and colour blended sleeves for my 2nd Kaleidoscope jumper

I cannot wait to pick up my knitting again 🙂

Colour Swatch Club

Good morning on this snowy day in Sheffield

I am thinking about colour and swatching and how, even when people have joined my Online Colour Blending workshop, where I promote the practice of swatching – not many people do.

https://videopress.com/v/aHmStf93?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&posterUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fvideos.files.wordpress.com%2FaHmStf93%2Fimg_2579_mp4_std.original.jpg&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

looking through one of my swatch books before my workshop on Friday

You cannot drive a car without practicing and you cannot play the piano with out practicing. You cannot get your colours right without swatching – at least at first – it does get easier and later you won’t have to but at first, practice.

I am thinking of starting a colour swatch book group. It will be online and we will meet once a month. I am not sure of its format yet but I will send you a charrt a month to knit in your own yarns.

Would this be of interest to anyone?

If you are interested then please get in touch with the contact box below and I will add you to a list to send information to – when it is ready. I am just putting a call out first to see if there is interest in the monthly club.

UPDATE – AS OF WEDNESDAY 21ST JAN THIS OPPORTUNITY TO JOIN THIS LIST IS NOW CLOSED

If you would like to subscribe to my blog for info on any other groups – complete the subscription box below

The winner of the yarn Giveaway

Here’s a Timelapse of me picking one name out of the hat this morning for the winner of the Jamieson & Smith yarn to knit my Tree and Star hat pattern

Thank you to everyone who entered this giveaway. Happy New Year and happy knitting love Tracey.

The winner of this Giveaway, is Kerry Poulter.

Announcement – New Kaleidoscope Jumper Knit along.

Kaleidoscope Jumper Pattern KAL

Hi everyone. Happy New knitting year.

I put a pole out recently on Instagram stories to see if people would like me to knit another Kaleidoscope Jumper and over 100 people added yes.

When I first knitted the jumper pattern in August, I made the pattern one size only and some people were disappointed about that. I wrote a blog on why this was the case which is here, if you would like to read that.

Recently, I have knitted the Tree and Star sleeves and didn’t know whether or not to knit another Kaleidoscope jumper body or just add them to a striped vest. I have decided to knit a 2nd Kaleidoscope jumper in larger needle size than the first one so that I can show everyone what increasing needle size will do to the overall size of the jumper.

The orginal Jumper pattern uses 2:75mm UK needles for the rib and 3mm UK needles for the body.

The jumper I am now knitting will use 3:5mm UK needles for the body and I will let you know along the way, what difference the needle size increase makes to the overall finished jumper.

Here are the two sleeves that I have just finished – one in 2025 and the other yesterday, 2026. The Tree and Star sleeve pattern has a full alphabet sheet so that you can add your own initials and date your project

The Tree and Star sleeve pattern is an additional option instead of the Tree sleeves in the original jumper. I have really enjoyed knitting these sleeves using my stash of randome colours, though, each band is mostly colour blended.

I have decided to do a Kaleidoscope Jumper Knit along so that it might help people if they feel stuck with the pattern. I will not be teaching on the KAL but I will be adding photos and updates to ravelry.

Here is the announcement on Ravelry and here is the Knit along forum group discussion on my ravelry I’m not very good at the group discussions on Ravelry but I will be trying very hard 🙂

For the timeline, I am thinking along the following lines
January – Cast on
Feb / March – Knit the body of the jumper
April – Knit the front V and back to shoulders.
May / June – Knit the sleeves, graft the shoulders, knit the V neck and join the sleeves by grafting

This might not be possible for everyone so, start when you like and if you have already started, then please add to the group chat

I will be knitting my 2nd Kaleidoscope jumper in many colours – I hope that some of you will join me – this is my first every real KAL.

If you have started this jumper pattern and would like to join the knitalong, then please add your relpy to the Group KAL thread here.

I am looking forward to meeting some of you in the group. 🙂

lots of love. Tracey

Happy New Year and a chance to win Shetland yarn bundle

New Year Sunrise at Stanage Edge

Happy New Year to my long-standing followers on this blog and to my new subscribers.

To celebrate the New Year, I arrived home from Japan on New Year’s Day and the next morning, I promptly went to Stanage Edge in the Peak District, which is 6 miles from my home in Sheffield, to watch the sunrise.

I could not have imagined that I would witness the biggest Orange Wolf Super moon setting over the horizon before an equally orange sun rose opposite making a truly Golden hour.

The ground was covered in ice puddles and the first scattering of a salty snow. An Icy wind cut through my coat and knitted jumper to the skin on my arms and I felt alive. Glad to be home glad to be back to the place that enriches me, time after time.

Normally I’m the only person on the edge of Stanage rocks at 7:45 am but there were small groups and a couple with a child who could not moderate the level of his own voice which carried excitedly across the edge of the rocks

I go to this place to reconnect to the core of myself – no cars, no city, no internet. The landscape has not changed for thousands of years. Many people know of this place and it is big enough to share because you need to be bold and brave in minus temperatures and biting winds to witness a moonset and a sunrise within half an hour while people still sleep in their warm unknowing beds.

On the New Year, as a thank you to my followers I have posted on Instagram an opportunity to win enough yarn to knit my tree and Star beanie hat in its original coloured yarn, purchased from Jamieson & Smith in Shetland, but some of you do not follow me on Instagram so I’m posting on here the same opportunity

I am offering one person, who will be picked out of a draw next week, the opportunity to win the original Shetland coloured yarns to knit this gorgeous Tree and Star beanie.

To enter the drawer you have to buy the pattern for the hat.

The link to the Tree and Star hat pattern is here

If the winner of the draw is in the UK, I will post the Shetland yarn to them free, but if you live in another country other than England, then I will ask for a contribution to the postage for the winner

This hat pattern is a perfect easy starter project if you would like to knit the kaleidoscope jumper project because they both have the same easy Shetland Tree and Star Motif

I hope you’ll be following me for another year because I will be changing a few things in 2026. If you already don’t do so there are lots more images on Instagram.

Kaleidoscope Jumper Pattern is here

Here is the post on instagram – where you will find lots more photos and offers.

Happy New Year – good luck with this opportunity to win enough wonderful Shetland Yarn to knit the Tree and Star Beanie –

Happy knitting. Love Tracey

Experimenting with colours that you love.

Tell me …. What is it that puts you off using or experimenting with new colours in your stranded colour work project?

I’m currently in Fujiyoshida – a town at the base of Mount Fuji, for 28 days. I’ve been knitting my Tree and Star sleeves with an idea to add them to a fabric body. I bought a couple of Kimono from the flea market at Hanazono Shrine in Tokyo but the fabric doesn’t work for a body with these sleeves. So, I may knit another Kaleidoscope jumper body using 3mm needles so that all the people who wanted a larger size can see how a needle increase from 2:75mm to 3mm will make to the overall size. Would that be of interest to anyone who was hoping for the next size up?

I am using my stash yarn as evidence of a journey in colour. A journey that anyone could do with their own stash. I kept knitting this motif in different colours because I couldn’t settle on just one. Each version felt like a different mood—quiet, bold, playful, grounded. The first colours of brightest pinks with my initials and the year 2026, when the project will be finished, felt like really owning the sleeve as – not just knitting but creative freedom.

That’s when I realized the pattern isn’t about my colour choices at all. It’s about giving you a place to try yours. I would like to invite you to have a look at these sleeves and think of the colours and if you were going to knit the same jumper – which ones might you give a try.

When I lived in Shetland, my knitting patterns and their colour choices were devised around the wild Shetland landscape, the croft house that I lived in and the woman who had lived in the house for 83 years until 1960. But now, the Kaleidoscope jumper has been more playful, named after my own kaleidoscope at home, which has a great big blue marble at the end.

Kaleidoscope

Would you like to try this jumper pattern for your everyday self—or your future self? I am wearing this jumper daily in Japan – it matches the sky and I am having a lot of fun wearing it with the matching hat and a tweed jacket. On Sunday, we all (from the residency) did a drop-in session for anyone who would like to knit or weave or trying punch needling. So many people came to see us including some Tokyo Fashion guys who wore all black, all brown or all Navy and I suggested that they needed a little colour – like a Fair Isle vest just showing through their dark colours -for every day. They were very interested in the colour idea.

The motif repeats consistently and the colours can be swapped without recalculating the whole pattern. I designed this so colour changes feel playful, not precious.

The pattern doesn’t ask you to commit to one look—it gives you a place to experiment. To trust your instincts. To surprise yourself.

If you want a project where colour gets to be personal, this one might be for you.

Swatch your colour ideas first – always swatch for colour to see what works and what doesn’t – for you. Keep the motif and the background colours with enough contrast so that the pattern is not muddied. And just experiment – this is the perfect motif.

Experimenting with colours that you love.

Here is the Kaleidoscope Jumper Let me know in the comments if you have bought the pattern and are still considering the colours you might choose.

Here are the Tree and Star sleeves which are alternative sleeves to the Tree only sleeves in the original pattern.

Let me know what you think about your colour choices.

Creative expression

I’m sitting on the roof of our residency, watching sunrise over Fuji, and I finally figured out that it’s Saturday. Being on an artist residency for a month, in another place, city, country, is kind of not knowing what day it is. To be fully immersed in place and a practice of making whatever comes to mind, and experiencing and finding new things in a new city that you never knew existed removes dates on a calendar and even day names.

I think it’s day 12. I finally settled into this place with new people and new building. On a practical level I’m still knitting. I’ve been knitting my second sleeve using the colours that I brought with me and really enjoying how they both sleeves sit alongside each other.

We’ve all had an artist interview with the people who manage the residency here. The questions were quite interesting – Tell us about you, what can you bring to Fujiyoshida, what does the residency space mean for you and a couple more questions that I’ve forgotten. I think what I bring here is an enduring curiosity for a place and culture (not everyone sees that in me) and an ability to share my findings with many people on my website blog and on Instagram. Of course I share just my perspective but I have a pretty keen eye.

Yesterday I was picked up by a complete stranger that contacted me through Instagram. She is called Shannon. She and her sister Pat were visiting their brother Mike who lives quite close to Fujiyoshida. We went to the Itchiku Kubota Art Museum, which is a museum built in 1994 by Itchiku Kubota to house his permanent exhibition of his work. It was quite remarkable to see the Kimono in all of their glory showing his techniques. If you ever go, my favourites were numbers 19 and 20. The gardens and buildings also represent the world of Itchiku

Then we went to the very beautiful chair museum to the foot of Mt. Fuji, in the forest of Oishi in Fujikawaguchiko. My favourite thing was the initial scent of wood on entering the building and the glorious, viewing Veranda where from many strategically placed small glass Windows in the traditional paper Shoji sliding doors you could view Mount Fuji whilst sitting on extremely exquisite low wooden sofas and chairs.

The view is exquisite. The scent was heavenly and then I found out that the building had been completely dismantled from the Saitama Prefecture in Tokyo, piece by piece and brought her to the mountain side.

If you don’t take chances with new people you never encounter these new things, so thank you Shannon for getting in touch and thank you Mike for driving us everywhere yesterday.

On a basic level, I’m knitting and my knitting is always portable so I sit on the roof at sunrise and watch the sun drench Fuji with colours of red or white light. I take my knitting to cafés and down to the Onsen, Which I visit every day except Wednesdays when it’s closed.

Knitting brought me here. Knitting has taken me to Shetland and other far off places and enabled me to continue to learn and express my creative practice through storytelling.

Here are my sleeves.

I am still not sure whether I will add them to a fabric body or a knitted body but if you want to practice your own colour work and experimentation through pattern and colour – then have to go with these sleeves or the hat pattern because this easy to knit motif lends itself to real experimentation and colour work.

Oh yes, I remember that one of the questions in the artist interview was, ‘what does art mean to you?’ and I think it is entirely about creative expression and freed of thought and when they both come together – you get alchemy

If you’d like to try this motif in a hat or jumper or alternative sleeves, then the links are here.

And even buying a small pattern helps and independent disigner to keep creating – so thank you. https://www.ravelry.com/designers/tracey-doxey

Fujiyoshida

Tonight the moon is blue. It is a full, Super cold moon. Now, it is only 8 pm but utterly freezing outside.

Today, after very little sleep, I decided to walk to the base of Mount Fuji. The morning was cold but bright. To get to Fuji, there is first about a 3 miles to walk from town to the Kitaguchi Hongu Fuji Sengen Shrine, which is a huge complex of buildings – the first small shrine is said to date back to 100AD. It is now a magnificent World Heritage Centre and I can completely understand why. I do not know its history but as I walked up the main road out of town, that leads directly to this place, I recognised that from the 16th century to the 19th century, the path was once lined with inns, temples and shrines and places managed my Oshi (priests) on both sides. Some of these places are still here and also recognised as historical buildings but some are also abandoned or derelict or turned into some other use but the gates at the front remain. Each one had information about its history and on each reading, it became more obvious how special this place has been to generations. The closer I got to Fuji, I began to sense how many people came to pilgrimage, rest and pray here before walking the mountain.

When you finally reach the gateway to Kitaguchi Shrine, it is in a forest of Japanese pine trees which all must be 100 feet tall. The path way is lined by majestic stone lanterns covered in moss. Immediately you are plunged into shadow and coldness under the trees where the pilgrims would’ve originally come to bathe and drink water before setting off to climb out Fuji.

The largest trees are respected with rope and paper ribbons. Even though I do not know or fully understand what is going on here, there is no denying that it is and has always been epic – as epic as when I walked the Great Wall of China and turned around to see the wall meander for miles into the distance, as epic as the day I spent in the Forbidden City and sat and the Pavilion of Crimson snow. These experiences are never forgotten and maybe hold some of the essence of the pilgrims within it. This is not just a complex of spiritual buildings they are stories of lives, beliefs, and gods.

Great stones made into water troughs were covered in ice with little tiny fearn forests growing around the edges. When I looked at the rock, I thought, if stones could talk what stories they would tell of all those who have passed here since Fuji settled from erupting.

I walked around towards the base of the walk up to Fuji. The forest made it very cold and I decided to start the walk to the base until the black bear signs became progressively increased and I thought better off it because I was on my own so I turned back.

Back home, when Takumi, came round to sort the smoke detector in the residency, he said that I could buy a tiny bell from the souvenir shop and hang it off the back of my bag to deter the black bear. I don’t think that I can trust that idea so much.

I have decided I might do a project – after Hokusai’s 100 views of Mount Fuji. I’ve shown quite a few of my Fuji, snaps on Instagram but now I’ve decided to work towards 100 modern views of Fuji. So now, hopefully, I will hopefully concentrate more on the idea but just to keep you going as Fuji shows up every day.

Here are a few views of Fuji in the last three days.

I have been knitting my second tree and star sleeve. I bought two antique kimono from a flea market at Hanazono shrine when I was in Tokyo because I was going to make a cloth body for my Tree and Star sleeves – you know, just make a little jacket body either padded or appliqued or something but I’m not so sure now

Here are the sleeves. I’m knitting them in lots of colours to give you ideas of alternative colour ways, if you’d like to knit the Kaleidoscope jumper or the sleeves yourself instead of in the blues and pinks that I chose.

It’s a very special place here in Fujiyoshida and I’m glad I made my own pilgrimage to get here.

Here is the sleeve pattern on Ravelry, if you would like to knit them for your own project or add them to the Kaleidoscope Jumper instead of the tree sleeves that are in the original pattern – see image on the right above.

So much more has happened, I met my lovely friend, Yuka, who I have know from Uni and we went around the Tokyo toilets (my request) after the Film – Perfect Days. I had such a perfect day.